


fighter

by ImSoSupernova



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Birthday Party, Eating Disorders, F/F, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Recovery, Toxic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 00:21:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImSoSupernova/pseuds/ImSoSupernova
Summary: as noora turns 18, she reflects on her past birthday parties.





	fighter

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted on tumblr on april 6 (noora's birthday), but i'm uploading it to ao3 as part of my remake process. hope u enjoy!

noora once asked her mother about the day she was born.  “you were fighter,” she tells her. “you fought me tooth and nail every step of the way. but in the end, you had to be. born a little too soon and a little too small. doctors weren’t sure if you’d make it.”

her first birthday party is when she’s in the psych hospital. they sit around wearing sweats and those paper party hats and the orderlies serve cake that none of them want to eat. she remembers those girls; pale, sunken cheeks and stringy thin hair, staring at the unlit candles (matches not allowed) and bright frosting with sunken, unfeeling eyes, and she thinks of them every birthday after. even now, she wonders how many of them were able to make it to 18.

sometimes she thinks about how fucked up it was that she never really celebrated her birthday until she was institutionalized. sometimes she thinks that if she never celebrated her birthday before then, it’s no wonder she was institutionalized. sometimes she laughs at this.

she remembers her first birthday in the kollektiv, waking up to eskild and linn with a stack of pancakes. wearing the same silly paper hats, but the mood is completely different. and then another celebration when eskild gets home from work with a cake from the bakery, and real lit candles, and linn has even changed into a nice shirt and skirt and wearing red lipstick “in honor of you” and is singing her happy birthday and smiling. and she knows, in the moment, what it means to be truly loved, and to have a family.

the year she turns 17 she celebrates with her new friends. sana bakes her a cake and eva and vilde try to frost it. it turns out a total mess, but it tastes amazing. chris brings some wine, and noora lets herself drink this time, just a little. eva gets super tipsy and ends up kissing her as a ‘birthday present’. noora finds herself thinking about this moment often in the next few weeks, even as her relationship with william becomes more serious, more turbulent.

and now she’s 18, officially an adult, and she can’t help looking back on where she was before. what she’s been through. and how, for the longest time, every year on her birthday she felt surprised to realize that she made it another year.

she was born a fighter and she’s fought every day to survive, wrestling with an eating disorder and betrayal and a boy who just won’t take no for an answer, and moving to spain and back again and discovering and wrestling with her sexuality. and so far, she’s survived everything they’ve been able to throw at her. and now she has a family of her own choosing, and the greatest friends she could ever hope for, and even a girlfriend who holds her close at night and makes her laugh even on her worst days.

today she’s 18 and she’s made it. and today, she can finally truly celebrate being alive.


End file.
